Guignol - The Alienation of a Generation

Ahead of the first show of the new tour, we met up with Pierfrancesco Adduce, the driving force behind Guignol, the Milan-based band now on their sixth album. Adduce answers our questions in great detail, both when discussing the music and the dynamics within the group, and when the conversation turns to the social themes underlying his lyrics.

The last two albums have seen a lot of lineup changes, so I wanted to ask how you go about bringing in a new musician for the band. Do you pick someone because you like them as a musician in general, or because you already have a clear idea of what the album will sound like and you know that person has the right qualities for what you have in mind?

I go down to the job centre and look for one there... No, actually, what happened is I ran into Paolo Libutti again about a year and a half ago. He wasn't playing at the time, and Guignol was down to just the two of us, me and Enrico Berton on drums. I asked him if he wanted to join the band, and at first we brought him in as a guitarist, but then he became our bassist and stayed there. Later on, Giovanni Calella, who produced the last two albums, introduced me to Raffaele Renne, who's very young. I talked to him and found him really suited to what we needed - very sharp and technically very skilled, above average - so I thought he could be right for us. Even in terms of what he listened to, he was fairly close to us, even though he's younger - obviously, when you're young you can't have a huge musical background yet. So we tried it out, put the pieces together, mixed them up, and created a chemistry that worked. Right now, I think this is our most balanced lineup in many years - I mean the most well-focused, compared to previous ones which were also strong but perhaps overdid certain aspects. This is the one that works best in service of the songs, of the material we have.

Actually, I wrote about that very thing in the review - it really stood out. Was it the chemistry you built together that gave you the idea of making the sound leaner?

Yes. I already had a clear idea of how I wanted to produce things, starting from the principle of subtracting rather than adding. I needed musicians willing to go along with that approach. Once we started playing together, I realized it could be done. Enrico's playing style is fairly stripped-down, and Paolo also has a very lean, though solid, line, so we already had a good starting point. I wanted to do a work of subtraction on the sound, not just in terms of instruments but also with the other instrument, which is the voice. In order to give more room to the songs, to the spoken parts, to the voice itself, we needed to strike a balance between all the parts. With them it was possible, and that wasn't something to take for granted. We tried it and it worked out - the last three or four years have been something of an ordeal for Guignol, it's been really tough, and we've made do in a thousand different ways, all a bit patched together. Giovanni Calella, Francesco Campanozzi, Paolo Perego all passed through - people who'd play one, two, three shows and move on, you witnessed it yourself...

I remember seeing you and Enrico with a guitarist at Birrificio Lambrate.

That guitarist was actually Paolo, and as I said, that wasn't his role, so we moved him to bass. It was an experimental phase - in fact that particular night didn't go well at all, but we needed to play in order to figure out where things stood. From that point on, we understood things better and got going, starting to get things in order in the spring of 2015. Then with Raffaele things began to take proper shape, and I even gave up the guitar - the sound is largely down to him now, while I play an acoustic and some rhythm parts and handle the spoken vocals, something I hadn't done in many years - it was something of a liberation. Above all, the whole thing has become leaner but also more powerful, stronger.

Live as well?

In terms of impact, yes - the live shows over the summer and autumn went really well, and I noticed it was very different. I realized I could avoid having to write, sing and play the songs all at once - I felt much freer, thanks to having a skilled instrumentalist in the band.

Was the songwriting itself also shaped by knowing what kind of band you had?

No, I write the songs as they come to me and bring them to the group in rehearsal, and once I'm convinced I've got something worthwhile, I present them and we arrange them together. I usually bring in the lyrics and a ready-made chord progression, guitar and vocals, and then we arrange things together and look for the best solutions to bring the songs out at their best. I lay the groundwork, and then the group takes a stance on it.

Given that you already had an idea of how to produce things and that the band had found the right chemistry, I'm wondering what role the outside producer actually played at that point.

The outside producer was Giovanni, as I mentioned, and he's excellent, we all know that. He's very good at exactly what we lacked - namely, highlighting the things we were missing, developing them and bringing them out better, and mixing the dynamics between the four of us more effectively. Because I have some basic ideas that I bring to the group, and once the initial direction is set, the actual work on the arrangements - figuring out what's missing and what can be strengthened - we entrusted to Giovanni, because an outside perspective is more objective and often manages to find the right balance more easily. Above all, he saved us a lot of time. We could have done it ourselves, but it would have taken much longer and the focus might not have ended up being the right one. Giovanni gave us a lot of help from the outside.

On a couple of songs I was struck by the bass sound, very dark and muffled, on "L'Uomo Senza Qualità" and "Piccolo Demone" - so I wanted to ask how that particular characteristic came about.

As I was saying, Paolo played guitar with us for a short while, but it didn't fit the way the band worked, so we tried moving him to bass. He's not really a bassist though, and that's the reason for that particular sound - but that was actually what we wanted, especially what I wanted. Paolo has grown a lot with this instrument, to the point where he's become a big part of what defines our songs.

As for the lyrics, I've always insisted in reviews that they often talk about things experienced at night, so I wanted to ask if you can confirm that, and if you'd like to say something in particular about living by night.

Maybe on the previous album that theme was a bit more central, but I don't think it is on this one - I think the situation here is pretty much outside the day/night distinction. There are events that are lived through just the same, whether the sun is shining or not. There's a common thread of experiences that have to do with lived life, and it goes beyond places and that kind of shortcut, if you will. What I mean is that on this record there's no idea of having to go hide and look for a moment in your day to find yourself or lose yourself. Here there's just losing yourself, full stop, or finding yourself - there's no middle ground, no compromises, no way out. It might seem otherwise from the general tone, but I don't think that's really the case. Even Ciampi's "Il Merlo" is what it is: it's uncertainty about your own work, your own expectations, your own shortcomings. "Sora Gemma" is a song about the life of a woman who's full of vitality both day and night, even though her work is mostly nocturnal, which requires a strong presence of spirit as well as body. Other songs: "L'Uomo Senza Qualità" is an obsession with a repressed life…

What struck me a lot was the realism of "Salvatore Tuttofare".

That one is absolutely diurnal - it's the alienation of a young man, a man, it's something I've experienced firsthand, and I don't like talking about these things, I find it a very delicate subject. I try to be very respectful, even though, when we're talking about songs, we can't turn it into hagiography of this or that person. But when it comes to themes like work and loneliness, not managing to make ends meet, these are very real, very concrete things, but they also have to do with something existential, something deeper - it's not just that we live in a country where the economy doesn't move and where we no longer know which saint to pray to. Salvatore is the figure of someone completely lost in a vortex he can't get out of, he can't get out, because he carries around a sense of guilt, which is actually a trap - you can't be guilty of everything that happens around you. Instead, there are a lot of people who not only experience the alienation of a job, of the orders they have to obey, but also have to deal with themselves, and they always feel inadequate, never feel up to the task. This is a society that's falling apart - we're not like the Japanese, who commit harakiri because they feel dishonoured by losing their job. I hope I belong to a somewhat more advanced civilization, but the facts are what they are: there are people who hang themselves over unbearable situations, and they slide into it slowly. I talk to people who are in that state, I have friends who come close to those situations - they put on a brave face to keep going, they drink a lot, they wear themselves out on weekends, then they go back to work on Monday, all those clichés that, if you will, are rather petty bourgeois, but they have a lot to do with everyone, every single day.

Personally, when I left a permanent job because I wanted to be done with that kind of dynamic, I was treated like some kind of thorny, touchy subject, someone to keep at arm's length, because we're in a situation where deciding for yourself, being self-determined, has become a sort of pathology. What, you decide what's best for you? No - there's a whole world out there deciding for you, and if you don't fall in line, you're crazy, you're out. That's what Salvatore is.

Going back to the night/day question, it's true that there's a time of day when I do this kind of reflecting and have the quiet I need to write, and that's the nighttime hours, no doubt about it. During the day I'm like a madman, partly because of my family situation too. Now my son goes to nursery school, so luckily I get a few hours of quiet, but yes, I work at night. Even back when I was studying, it worked better for me - I have this kind of metabolism - and if you're asking whether that has something to do with songwriting, maybe it does, and maybe it's true when someone on the outside says so.

One last silly question: how come only this album and "Addio Cane" are on Spotify?

We'll put the others up too, it's just a matter of internal organization and my own poor relationship with technology.

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